Page 41 of My Best Bet

I loved watching her skate alone, but I knew she desperately wanted a partner. Her last partner, Dmitry, left after last season because he wanted to skate for Russia. That was his loss. He wasn’t going to find a better partner than Mer– I should know, I’d been her real-life partner for about two years now.

As soon as the buzzer went off, she grabbed her sweater and water from the boards and glided off the ice.

Skipping down the steps, I bolted for the zam door so I could reach her in the hallway before she entered her locker room.

Rounding the door, I caught her right on time and pulled her into the alcove of an empty locker room and immediately dipped to kiss her like we’d done hundreds of times. As soon as our lips touched, a jolt shot straight from my heart to my groin.

Pulling back, her eyes lit up when they landed on me and I felt like the luckiest bastard alive.

“I didn’t know you were still here,” she said with a bright smile, still breathing hard from her practice.

“Course I am,” I grinned, planting my hands on the cinderblock on either side of her head. “Hurry up and get your skates off, but bring ‘em with you, alright? We have a surprise for you.” I wagged my eyebrows.

“A surprise?” she questioned, biting her lip to hide her smile. “What kind of surprise?” She held the sides of the sherpa-lined plaid jacket I stole from JP. I had my team winter coat and a hoodie already tucked in my truck for her to use because she always wore “cute” jackets that didn’t keep the cold out for shit.

“Can’t tell you. Hurry it up, yeah?” I gave her a booty squeeze and a wink.

With a little grin on her face, she ducked under my arm and pulled open her locker room door.

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As I drove us over to the secret spot, she sat in the shot-gun seat of my truck and vented about school. Mer couldn’t wait to be done with high school and then she claimed she was never opening another book again unless it was a romance novel. I just laughed because she barely went to school as it was– she wentfor a couple hours a day for her main subjects, then took her elective courses online.

Apparently she was now failing biology class because she refused to participate in the pig dissection and her group members “threw her under the bus.”

“I’m sorry, babe,” I said with a laugh, mentally picturing her scrunching her nose and refusing to get too close to the pig. “I wish I could’ve been in your group. I would’ve helped you.” And I wished for the millionth time that I went to public school with her instead of my private all-guys school. I guess it wouldn’t have helped much anyway, seeing as I was a grade above her because she had a late birthday.

“Ugh I wish you could’ve too,” she pouted.

“You brought your homework with you?” I’d been helping her with math and science– my favorite subjects– all year.

“Yes,” she sighed. “I don’t wanna think about it ‘til Sunday though.”

Turning down a bumpy dirty road, I snuck a glance at Mer and her face scrunched in question, making me laugh.

When I finally pulled my truck up to the frozen lake, Kappy and JP already had the bonfire going strong. We stole a construction light from JP’s dad’s garage and it was plugged into JP’s truck, illuminating Kappy and JP while they shoveled off a section of the lake big enough for us to have a fun pond hockey game.

A minute later, another car came up next to us– Piper, her partner Patrick, and a freestyle girl named Ali who recently started skating at Centre Ice, all unloaded out of the car.

“Colt?” Mer looked at me in question. “What’s going on?”

Grinning, I said, “Happy Sweet Seventeen, Bennett.” Leaning over the center console, I gave her a quick kiss and then planted a hockey beanie on her head. “Let’s go.”

She sat there blinking at me, then slowly turned to see the bonfire set up and the frozen lake stretched out before us. “This is… for me?”

“Of course it is, you didn’t think we’d forget your birthday, did you?” I grinned. I felt bad last year because we were away on a tournament. Her birthday, December 17th, usually fell on the last weekend before Christmas, so we almost always had a hockey tournament. Because of hockey, I wasn’t sure how many times I’d be able to be with her on her actual birthday, so I wanted to make sure this year was unforgettable.

The next couple hours were full of us playing pond hockey, doing over the top cellies, and enjoying the hell out of outside with the boombox blasting top hits.

Kappy and Patrick– who was actually pretty decent with a stick and puck– ganged up on Piper. Every time she touched the puck, one of them would gently shove her in the snowbank.

“You assholes!” she shrieked, while the rest of us struggled not to laugh at her expense.

“You’re okay, P,” Patrick said, hauling her up out of the snow and planting her back on her blades.

Patrick and Piper were complete opposites– he had an easy-going disposition while Piper loved dramatics, so I could see how the two of them worked well together as partners, but I had a feeling Patrick was getting revenge tonight for all the times she got her way at the rink.

Off by the net, JP and Ali were whispering to each other. JP had given his team jacket to Ali, leaving him only in a hoodie, so he had to be freezing. Every once in a while, Ali would throw her head back laughing at something he said, which shocked me. The dude was so quiet that I didn’t think he had it in him to charm a girl, but it looked like Ali really liked him.

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